Council Statement: Ranked Choice Voting

The Salt Lake City Council is open to pursuing ranked choice voting, but it just doesn’t make sense to hurriedly do so in 2019. If the Council decides to pursue it in the future, a significant voter education effort would need to follow because we believe the public needs to be well-informed about significant changes to the ballot process. When the City moved to vote-by-mail ballots in 2015, for instance, the City took a year to educate voters, spending $65,000 on outreach and education.

What’s more, Salt Lake City has partnered with Salt Lake County for all its past municipal elections. The County has decided not to pursue ranked choice voting this year. It’s our understanding that some counties in the state are piloting ranked choice and purchased new software to accommodate, but that software is not certified to use in elections yet. We understand Salt Lake County is waiting to see how those new pilot programs work out. We’ll be interested to see as well.